


Never again, John.

by rageandserenityis_ecstasy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Love, Other, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 20:28:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2520764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageandserenityis_ecstasy/pseuds/rageandserenityis_ecstasy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is back, very unexpectedly. The therapist said he was just a figment of the imagination. But John now knows the real truth...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never again, John.

The street lamps were beginning to glow a sickly orange when the good doctor stormed through the door to his compact flat. With a heavy sigh he dropped his phone on the worktop side and shrugged off his coat. Gladstone, his plump English Bull-Dog, skittered in aimless circles as he sniffed curiously at furniture. Interestingly, the room had obtained an oddly familiar smell. Expensive shampoo, faint cigarette smoke and warm vanilla.

The doctor's day had been busy. It was flu season and a constant stream of pedantic mothers had been dragging their protesting children in for their immunisations, miserably bundled into the surgery at the merest hint of cold. He ran his hand tenderly down his arm, poking at the long inflamed stripe where one particularly bull-headed little boy had adamantly retaliated as the needle pierced the pale skin of his arm. Pain. It was subtle but noticeable. A dull, aching reminder that for the last three years, and many more to come, that the pain which had stabbed into his heart and was bleeding it dry had settled in to stay.

As the doctor settled on the sofa with a flannel blanket and Gladstone, he drifted into a light, dreamless sleep. He had forgotten to eat again. It had been happening for a while now. Aimlessly he had forced himself into a pattern of work and sleep, repeated many times over. Some time later he was awoken by Gladstone’s sharp bark spiralling through sparsely furnished flat.

After five long minutes of scoping the flat with bleary eyes, he ambled to his bedroom, threw back the covers and dropped into blackness.

Gradually, the door to his bedroom eased open. He was still fixed in a sleepily oblivious trance. A conspicuous figure loomed in the dimly lit doorway, disrupting the thin shaft of light that sliced across the sleeping man's face. Seamlessly, the figure slipped into shadow of the door and lay in wait.

As minutes passed, the sleeping man's breathing quickened. He sat bolt upright in bed, screams rasping roughly against his throat. Shaking, his hand searched under his pillow for a gun that was no longer there. Nightmares of Afghanistan were fresh in his mind. With a desperate twist of his body his hand flew to his shoulder in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure building at the star of ruptured skin. Trapped in between the traumas of conflict, his mind was ricocheting off boundaries of mindless terror.

During this lengthy battle to regain peace of mind, the sinewy figure stood to attention in the doorway. His gaze fell over the other man across the old army trunk at the foot of his pine bed, peering into the man’s personal struggles.The haven of bedsheets that clad the man, failed to hide the stocky body racking with long, pleading sobs.

"Please! Don't... No! Please!"

Pushed into action by the hopeless, pleading note in his voice, the figure emerged cautiously from the shadows. Suddenly the dagger of light from the hallway flashed over his face to highlight his features somewhat delicately, his head cocked quizzically to one side. Meanwhile the other man had choked himself awake with his desperate cries and had the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes as he tried to swallow the feeling of sand rolling around his mouth. Still he whimpered loudly, oblivious to the world around for the time being, yet as the figure neared he glanced up instinctively and whined.

"No. No! Ella said 'If he comes back, ignore him. He is a figment of your imagination'. You're not real! You're dead. You have been for the last three years so why would you be here now?" He slurred, still induced with sleep.

"John," the figure murmured weakly, as he moved closer to sit on the bed. John instantly recoiled in horror.

"No! Get away! You're not real! You're all in my head! A hallucination. A fake. A fraud!"

"John. It's me. Really me."

The figure shuffled towards John and cupped his jaw with slender, shaking fingers as he spoke.

"I am real. I'm so sorry, John. I had to untangle Moriarty's web. It was complex. So complex.”

 

Despite initially flinching at the contact, John quickly relaxed and brought his right hand up shakily to rest over the taller man's.

"Y-you're really here?" he choked, his voice wavering.

"I am. Yes. Really."

"Sherlock," he whimpered and threw his arms around the man's wiry frame. "Three years! Three years you were gone!"

Sherlock pulled back at the flood of contact, but as he glanced at John's pale face he realised how much John had missed him and tucked him tenderly back into his arms.

"I'm sorry, John. So very sorry. Never again. I promise."

The shorter man visibly relaxed into the embrace. Glad to finally be where he finally felt safe, as the taller man's grip gradually tightened into a desperate hold, a singular tear slid from the emotionless man's right eye, catching and changing direction on every angular feature it met.

"I believe in Sherlock Holmes."


End file.
